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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28619163">Runaways</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/pseuds/crinklefries'>crinklefries</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All These Things I've Done [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>A lot of tropes, Aesir Steve, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Banter, Bodyguard Bucky, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationship, Exes to Lovers, Faeries - Freeform, Fluff, Humor, Inspired by Twitter, Jotun Bucky, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mutual Pining, One Shot Collection, President/Bodyguard, Roommates, Secret Relationship, president Steve, shield agent bucky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:53:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,051</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28619163</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/pseuds/crinklefries</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>I knew it when I met you / I'm not gonna let you run away</p>
  <p>*</p>
  <p>[ a collection of steve/bucky one-shots; inspired by "location + trope" prompts ]</p>
</div>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>All These Things I've Done [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2102379</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>153</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>312</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. i. for reasons unknown (throne/ice crown)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote almost 150K for (N)ASBB in like four months and immediately and promptly forgot how to write. So I solicited prompts on Twitter to try and remember what "writing" means.</p><p>Please enjoy this fic series, a collection of one-shots featuring Steve/Bucky, Thor/Loki, and Thanatos/Zagreus; updated whenever I feel like writing more! Also the title to each ficlet will be songs by The Killers because that's what I deserve.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p><b>prompt:</b> throne + ice crown (steve/bucky)</p>
  <p>*</p>
</div>The Aesir watches him.<p>“Show me something, Jotun,” Steve says quietly. “Show me magic.”</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is a continuation (?) or one-shot based on the Aesir!Steve/Jotun!Bucky one-shot from Space Oddity. :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>*</p><p><span class="u"><strong>i. for reasons unknown</strong> </span> <strong> | </strong> <span class="u"> <strong>throne + ice crown (steve/bucky)</strong> </span><strong>| </strong> <span class="u"> <strong>for @steebadore</strong> </span></p><p>*</p><p>His fingers trace the curves along the top rail, blue against gold, skin the color of the winter sky and the warm glint of metal, spiked along the edges like a starburst caught in molten gold. It is only him and this—a symbol of something he had learned to hate—a world and a bridge away from home. There is heat where there should be cold, red velvet where he has always seen ice.</p><p>He takes a breath and feels eyes bore into the back of his head.</p><p>“You know,” Bucky says. “It’s not polite to stare.”</p><p>A surprised pause, as though Bucky could not possibly have guessed there was someone at his back; as though Bucky could ever be so careless, or this person so quiet, shrouded like a question.</p><p>As though anything about the Aesir could ever be half so mysterious.</p><p>“Well,” the person says. “It’s also not polite to touch someone else’s things. So you know.”</p><p>Bucky snorts.</p><p>“No,” he says and turns from the throne. “Why don’t you explain it to me?”</p><p>It’s just as Bucky had expected it to be. Not because he has come to know the way he breathes or the way he steps—the feel of his presence in the air, the sound of his movements—but because whenever he turns, there he seems to be.</p><p>“I don’t think that would go very well,” Steve Rogers says. He has the wherewithal to offer a self-effacing smile, not that that will help him. Bucky raises an eyebrow. “Whenever I open my mouth, you leave.”</p><p>Curse this insufferable brute. Bucky struggles to suppress a smile.</p><p>“You’re right,” he says. “That doesn’t seem very fair to me. Maybe the next time you open your mouth, <em>you</em> should leave instead.”</p><p>Apparently this was not the right thing to say if what he wanted was to relieve himself of his golden-haired burden. What little caution Steve had to begin with breaks, a terribly smug expression lighting up his face.</p><p>“You like me,” Steve says.</p><p>“Ugh,” Bucky says and turns away.</p><p>This is also the wrong thing to do, evidently, just one bad decision in a string of bad decisions, beginning with coming to Asgard and going to that tavern that one time and letting this stubborn Aesir fool sit next to him and ending with not being quick enough to retreat down the throne steps before he ends up next to him again, all six foot-whatever inches of him, with his gleaming hair in a neat braid over his shoulder and armor sculpted to his broad chest and bulging arms and thick calves, blue velvet draped down his back, and a row of silver earrings glinting against both shells of his ears.</p><p>“You are too close,” Bucky informs him. “I can smell the stink of the Aesir on you.”</p><p>“I just bathed,” Steve says, with a crooked smile. “In soaps and fragrant oils.”</p><p>“Ugh,” Bucky says again, wrinkling his nose. “Repugnant.”</p><p>It’s terrible enough to see Steve from far away—or seated next to him at a feast or standing across from him during a ceremony—and worse to see him up close. The gem in his eyebrow winks in the light and the crooked smile eases from his face until something more eager replaces it, a sincerity Bucky doesn’t want to see.</p><p>“Tell me something,” Steve says.</p><p>“I’d rather not,” Bucky mutters.</p><p>That only makes Steve smile.</p><p>“They say your prince is a witch,” he says.</p><p>Bucky stills and Steve watches him, his expression soft, his gaze unrelenting.</p><p>“What is it you would like me to say, Aesir?” Bucky says. A careful eyebrow raised, a warning in his voice.</p><p>If it is meant as a careful threat, Steve does not take it as one. Instead, the Aesir leans forward and Bucky takes another step back, one step below.</p><p>“Is he?” Steve asks. And then, the real question—“Are you?”</p><p>“Am I a witch?” Bucky repeats, suddenly laughing.</p><p>The smile doesn’t leave Steve’s face.</p><p>“I don’t know,” he says. “That was my question.”</p><p>Bucky doesn’t answer. He could. It would be easy enough to dispel the rumors or to encourage them otherwise. The Aesir brute would believe him either way, he can tell. It’s written in the curve of his brows, in the honest, open expression across his face. He’s asking because he wants to know, and it doesn’t occur to him that Bucky would lie.</p><p>This, too, doesn’t appear to be a deterrent.</p><p>Maybe silence is all the answer he needed. Or, perhaps, he always made the truth he sought to find.</p><p>The Aesir watches him.</p><p>“Show me something, Jotun,” Steve says quietly. “Show me magic.”</p><p><br/>Bucky should say no. He should smile sweetly and turn on his blue heels.</p><p>He inclines his head instead.</p><p>“I don’t have the same talents as his majesty,” he says.</p><p>That doesn’t seem to bother Steve. He shifts slightly, the faint hum of metal armor against the gold molding of the throne. Bucky’s distracted by the noise and his eyes flicker up, Steve’s silver-limned vambraces glinting under floating candles, the steel armor across his barrel chest, a sharp and cautious smile on his mouth. Is this a test?</p><p>Bucky has never failed a test against an Aesir before. And he does not plan to here either, not in front of one who watches him as though starving.</p><p>“But you have <em>some</em>,” Steve says. His voice is low, but they are alone in the chamber, so it echoes anyway, soft against the two of them and measured against everything else.</p><p>“You cannot be companions with Loki and not learn some things,” Bucky says, mildly.</p><p>“Is he that generous with knowledge?” Steve asks. “...the Jotun prince?”</p><p>There’s a slight look of surprise indented into his features, a faint arch between strong brows. It makes Bucky both angry and confused. He wants to press a thumb between them, trace the golden shape under his blue skin.</p><p>It’s a fair question, anyway. They call Loki <em>Silvertongue</em> and not always for gracious reasons.</p><p>“No,” Bucky says and this time it’s with a grin. “But he doesn’t like being bored. And I don’t like being boring.”</p><p>The truth is that Loki crafts magic out of thin air and there is not a lot on Jotunheim that is magical. The truth is that Bucky loves Loki and he would never have lasted at the prince’s side if he had not learned some of that magic for himself. If he had not taken it for himself.</p><p>“Bucky,” Steve says, his voice low again, and Bucky laughs again.</p><p>Steve shifts again and this time he’s standing straight, moved closer, Bucky two steps below him and Steve towering over him next to a throne of gilded jewels.</p><p>Bucky has always been in the heart of power and never craved it for himself. Loki is his prince, Laufey his king. Still, Steve glitters under the light, the gold thread of his hair glinting and the deep blue of his eyes lit brightly in firelight. It makes Bucky suck in a shaky breath, a simmering heat crawling up his cold, frost giant spine.</p><p>He reaches for Steve’s hands then, slowly turns them palms up. Steve says nothing, but Bucky hears him inhale quickly, the warmth of his hands burning against Bucky’s cold fingers.</p><p>For a moment, Bucky does nothing. It’s a strange, foreign image—the Aesir’s pale skin against his own deep blue—incongruous, but not disconcerting. Then he slides his fingertips across Steve’s large, calloused palms.</p><p>“Bucky,” Steve whispers again and Bucky hushes him with a soft, whispered hiss.</p><p>Around them the air grows colder, the close space around them dropping in degrees, the floating candles flickering with frost. Steve lets out a shaky breath and it fogs before him—his breath, the air, his sky blue eyes.</p><p>Bucky smiles.</p><p>The seidr sparks under his fingertips, not sharp and bright like Loki’s own, but something quieter, a slow and steady churn of magic, like the tide licking against the shore.</p><p>It starts with a swirl of soft, translucent blue. Then it circles around itself, again and again, seidr swirling in blues and whites, a crystalline structure building layer by layer. First, a round base and then small spires, arcing up, the slopes studded with jewels of crystal ice.</p><p>It’s cool to touch, not frozen, like ice, but as though chilled metal, with corners and peaks sharpened to draw blood. The crown glimmers, sitting on Steve’s palms, and Bucky’s eyes flicker up toward the Aesir’s face, his own mouth curving up in something a little smug, something a little pleased.</p><p>“It’s—” Steve starts.</p><p>“Ice,” Bucky interrupts, only for Steve to finish with, “Beautiful.”</p><p>Bucky pauses. Steve’s not looking at the crown of ice.</p><p>Something ticks against Bucky’s ribs, a hum in his chest. His cheeks heat.</p><p>“What?” he says, dumbly.</p><p>Steve’s palms shift, his long, strong fingers circling the ice crown from its sides.</p><p>Bucky has fought in countless Jotun wars. He has clashed blades with Aesir warriors and slayed more than his fair share of Vanir and of dark elves. Once, he had helped Loki wrap a body in his bedchamber and shove it into the Ifil river.</p><p>Steve’s eyes don’t leave his. He takes a step closer and Bucky, taking a shallow breath, stays where he is.</p><p>This, he can tell, has been his biggest mistake.</p><p>He feels fingertips brush the curve of his horns and he inhales, a sharp and hungry tug sparking in his stomach, a jolt somewhere further below.</p><p>Steve’s breath is held and Bucky mirrors this, his thoughts a tangled mess, his mind a dense fog. How did this happen? he wonders. How did he let an Aesir brute come so close as to touch him?</p><p>Bucky feels ice on his brow, the cool press of chilled metal in his dark, curling hair.</p><p>Steve doesn’t move back.</p><p>Bucky can feel the heat of his skin against his own, the air warming between the two of them.</p><p>This is a mistake, he thinks again. His heart thuds near his throat. This has been his biggest mistake.</p><p>Steve’s palm presses against Bucky’s cool blue skin and he guides his face up, Bucky’s stubborn refusal to look into those eyes again crumbling with the firm press of fingers to his jaw.</p><p>“I’m no prince,” Bucky says, quietly.</p><p>The ice crown glints on his head, candlelight caught on the tips.</p><p>Steve says nothing for a moment. Then his mouth curves up into a smile.</p><p>“Neither am I,” the Aesir—the Asgardian prince’s best man, the Asgardian king’s golden warrior—says.</p><p>“You are my enemy,” Bucky insists. His throat sticks. He does not sound convincing. “I despise you. I would rather shove a shard in between your ribs than—”</p><p>“Than?” Steve’s mouth is infuriatingly stubborn, turned up at the corners as it is.</p><p>Bucky glares, but the effect is lost, his fingertips suddenly on Steve’s golden braid. He’s distracted immediately, his gaze shifting as he slides his fingers over the bumps, the softs twists of fine hair. He’s used to braiding Loki’s hair, but the black of his prince’s braid doesn’t gleam as brightly as the gold, nor feel as soft against his palm.</p><p>Steve tilts his head.</p><p>“Well,” he says. “Stranger things have happened.”</p><p>Bucky curses, internally.</p><p>“Like a Jotun prince wedding an Aesir one?” Bucky says softly and then laughs. Perhaps he’s lost his mind.</p><p>“Yes,” Steve replies. The corner of his mouth turns up. “Something like that.”</p><p>For the second time, Bucky feels his face being turned up. Usually he would protest to being handled forcefully like this, but that is an objection for another time. For now, he frowns at the soft smirk on the Aesir warrior’s face and when Steve leans down toward him, Bucky stretches up on his toes to accept his offering.</p><p>Steve’s mouth is warm against his own and when Steve’s fingers tangle in Bucky’s curls, they brush against the crown of ice.</p><p>*</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. ii. read my mind (president/bodyguard)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p><b>prompt:</b> car + president/bodyguard (steve/bucky)</p>
  <p>*</p>
</div>“Mr. President.”<p>Steve stills only a little, the tired edges of a well-worn smile at the corners of his mouth.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This president/bodyguard AU was supposed to originally go in Space Oddity, but didn't make the cut. So here is a BRIEF(ish) one shot into what that could have been like. WHO KNOWS, maybe this will one day turn into a full blown fic.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong><span class="u">ii. read my mind</span> | <span class="u">car + president/bodyguard (steve/bucky)</span> | <span class="u">for @maggneto</span></strong>
</p><p>*</p><p>“Mr. President.”</p><p>Steve stills only a little, the tired edges of a well-worn smile at the corners of his mouth. He looks out at the audience, waving slightly as they stand for him—an ovation at the end of a somewhat grueling interview. His head spins a little from it all—the glare of the bright lights, the heat of sitting on stage, in a suit, the questions and the answers and the somewhat forced laughter because not everything the late night host says can be funny, but it’s Steve’s job to make sure he thinks it is.</p><p>“Your car is outside,” the agent says again, leaning toward him, speaking softly into Steve’s ear.</p><p>Steve swallows and nods.</p><p>“Thank you,” he mutters.</p><p>There’s the briefest hint of a touch—just fingertips grazing the back of his neck, and then it’s gone—the touch and the person.</p><p>He lets out a shaky exhale as the host—one of the Jimmys—laughs and moves in.</p><p>“Before we let you leave, Mr. President,” the Jimmy says. “There’s one question our audience is dying to know.”</p><p>Steve barely swallows his tired sigh. Of course there’s one more question. Of course it’s what the audience is dying to know.</p><p>He tilts his mouth up in a smirk. It’s not genuine, but it is a deflection and that works as a perfect exchange almost all of the time.</p><p>He’s young, he’s handsome, he’s the only bachelor who has occupied the White House since James fucking Buchanan—Steve nearly snorts at that. He doesn’t, because that would elicit more than one question on national fucking television, but he has to admit, it’s all very. Ironic.</p><p>“It’s about how I felt about the series finale of Game of Thrones, isn’t it, Jimmy?” Steve says and, on cue, everyone laughs. The Jimmy laughs, the audience laughs; hell, even the camera crew laugh.</p><p>Steve leans closer to the Jimmy, as though about to let him in on a secret. He has nothing to say to this man—not about Game of Thrones and certainly not about his love life. Still, he’s not the President for nothing. He’s going to make it up and the Jimmy is going to go viral on the Internet because of it.</p><p>“Well, my presidency couldn’t be worse than it, I’ll tell you that.”</p><p><br/>In retrospect, it probably hadn’t been the most tactful thing to say on live television, given he was the leader of the free world, but he also doesn’t think anyone out there will actively disagree with him.</p><p>“Mr. President.”</p><p>There are two secret service agents waiting for him backstage, after the Jimmy has shaken his hand onstage and he’s bowed out and said thank you to the workers backstage who make the entire thing possible.</p><p>“Agent Hill,” Steve says, inclining his head. “Agent Danvers.”</p><p>The two women look at him briefly, acknowledging the President and tapping lightly on their ear pieces to make sure they’re hearing their orders correctly. Steve isn’t so obvious as to look for the third agent on duty, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice his absence.</p><p>“Sam,” Steve says and his Chief of Staff emerges from one of the side rooms with two long coats and an iPad balanced on his arms. “All good?”</p><p>“Well you’re not going to score any points with HBO,” Sam grins and hands Steve his long, dark peacoat. “But you are the leader of the free world, so I think you’ll survive.”</p><p>“Aw no,” Steve says while shrugging his coat on. “They’re not going to make me pay for their service now, are they? I haven’t finished the Sopranos yet, I didn’t think this through.”</p><p>“You never think anything through,” Sam says with a snort. He’s typing something into his iPad. “But if they cut you off, we’ll just jack someone else’s password for you.”</p><p>Steve smiles blandly at people who wave at him as he follows Sam out from the backstage area, Maria and Carol flanking them from behind.</p><p>“I don’t think you can say that out loud,” Steve says. “Or admit that you’d do that.”</p><p>“What are they gonna do?” Sam replies, still typing into his iPad. “Impeach you for borrowing an HBO password? When everyone else in the free world does it?”</p><p>“Don’t give the Republicans any ideas,” Steve mutters. It’s not <em>not</em> something they would do, he’ll say that much.</p><p>Sam leads them into the elevator and Maria and Carol follow, guarding them from the front. Steve tries not to fidget as they take the ride down, but his phone is out in his hand and he’s scrolling through his texts looking for—but there’s nothing there, nothing new that isn’t a Google Alert or Peggy reminding him about his talking points for his press conference tomorrow.</p><p>He sighs and puts his phone away in disappointment.</p><p>The elevator dings for the basement level, where his car and more secret service agents are waiting.</p><p>“Don’t look like that,” Sam says.</p><p>“Like what?” Steve mutters.</p><p>“Like someone offered you a puppy and took it away from you,” Sam says. He’s not even looking at Steve. Steve’s frown deepens. “He’s waiting for you in the car.”</p><p>Steve looks up at Sam then and he can feel his expression lighten, his features just brightening <em>immediately</em> and if there was ever a time to be embarrassed about it, it was before his Chief of Staff and his closest security detail had found out.</p><p>Steve can’t bring himself to feel sorry about it, though. Or even embarrassed. Because it hadn’t been a possibility, before they knew.</p><p>But now? It’s just another secret for them to keep.</p><p><br/>Agent Banner opens the door to the car for him. He can see another agent on the other side of the car and their driver, Jarvis, standing by the driver’s side door.</p><p>“Jarvis,” Steve says, inclining his head toward his driver of three years.</p><p>“Sir,” Jarvis says in response. “Good interview?”</p><p>“Don’t expect me on the Game of Thrones prequel any time soon,” Steve says with a slight grin.</p><p>“That comes to me as a disappointment, sir,” Jarvis says, respectfully. “I think you would have made a great snack for those dragons.”</p><p><br/>Steve is smiling slightly as he slides inside the car. The door closes beside him. Usually Sam would take the car back with him or he would at least be followed in by either Hill or Danvers, or both, but tonight it’s a little different.</p><p>It’s Thursday night.</p><p>“Where to, Mr. President?” Jarvis asks from the driver’s seat.</p><p>Steve looks up at the person across from him.</p><p>There’s nothing about a secret service uniform that doesn’t look good on him—the tailored black suit and the slim blue tie and the sunglasses that he’s wearing even though it’s 8 o clock on a winter’s evening and night had fallen a good three hours before. His brown hair is brushed back, ends curling loosely at his shoulders. There’s a familiar dimple in his chin that Steve just wants to press his mouth to.</p><p>Bucky doesn’t take off his sunglasses, but he does raise an eyebrow.</p><p>In truth, there’s nothing better Steve wants to do than drive back to the Waldorf Astoria, take the back entrance straight up to the presidential suite, and pull him into bed for the rest of the night. But it’s Thursday night and that only comes around once a week.</p><p>“I’m hungry,” he tells Bucky.</p><p>Bucky says nothing for a moment, content to just stare at Steve through the dark tint of his lenses. Then, slowly, he reaches up and slides them into his hair. He gives Steve a crooked smile that warms Steve’s stomach.</p><p>“You’re always hungry,” Bucky says.</p><p>“I’m a growing boy, Buck,” Steve, age thirty-eight years old, says.</p><p>Bucky doesn’t deign that with a response. Well, that’s not entirely true. He snorts and rolls his eyes.</p><p>“Jarvis, I made reservations for the rooftop at Restaurant Daniel,” Bucky says. He doesn’t turn around.</p><p>Steve’s smile widens.</p><p>“Very good, sir,” Jarvis says from the front. Then he reaches up and hits a button and the thick pane of glass slides up between them.</p><p>Steve waits just long enough for the engine to start and for the car to begin to move before he reaches for him.</p><p>Bucky makes a noise somewhere between a laugh and a snort of consternation before Steve has his hands around his waist and is tugging him awkwardly across the space and onto his lap. Bucky’s a little too big to be sitting there, so he re-adjusts and straddles him the best he can, Steve’s hands still hot against his waist and Bucky’s fingers pressed against the warm skin of Steve’s neck.</p><p>“I’m your bodyguard, Mr. President,” Bucky says, teasingly. “This goes against what they taught us in secret service school.”</p><p>“Weird. Secret service school doesn’t sound very open-minded,” Steve says.</p><p>This makes Bucky snort, which, in turn, makes the tension in Steve’s shoulders loosen. He’s always so stiff after interviews, after sitting straight for hours, rigid and hyper-aware of his every move, every smile, every word that comes out of his mouth. It always takes him hours to come back from that brittle edge, the impossible wall they’ve built for him to climb.</p><p>But this helps. Having Bucky in his arms helps. Having Bucky’s metal fingers sliding through his soft, blond hair helps.</p><p>“They’re very serious about what we do,” Bucky says. “We are to protect and serve, guarding our client with our minds and bodies.”</p><p>“Oh, but you are, Bucky,” Steve says, very seriously. “You’re guarding my body <em>very</em> well.”</p><p>Bucky makes an exasperated sound, which ultimately sounds more fond than anything else.</p><p>“I can’t stand you,” Bucky says and Steve softens at that. The hours of preparation, the spotlight, the questions and answers and briefings and the fawning handshakes and attention—all of that just melts away.</p><p>Suddenly it’s just him and his best friend, the only person he’s known all his life, the boy he’s loved since he was a teenager.</p><p>“You okay?” Bucky asks softly.</p><p>He’s as attuned to Steve’s moods and needs as Steve is with whenever someone has bad news of the state to share with him. In the position he’s in, it’s his job to know a lot of things, including when people want something from him, when an Executive Order is going to land him on the Twitter trending section, and when the economy is on the verge of a global meltdown.</p><p>It can get too much, the weight of the world, so he needs this—these Thursday nights—needs Bucky to press his fingers into Steve’s skin and remind him that he’s human after all.</p><p>“Yeah,” Steve says. “Just tired.”</p><p>“It’s been a busy week,” Bucky says. He rubs circles into Steve’s shoulders and Steve swallows a content sigh.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“The Summit is soon,” Bucky says. “You’re going to have to fly out to Dubai.”</p><p>Steve doesn’t swallow his sigh this time. Instead, he lets his forehead fall onto Bucky’s shoulder.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says.</p><p>Bucky doesn’t follow up after that, just hums a little as Steve rests his eyes and lets Bucky soothe the tension from his shoulders.</p><p>The car rumbles gently under them, the New York City skyline passing outside the black-tinted windows.</p><p>It doesn’t take too long to make him feel looser, his body slowly coming back to life.</p><p>“Buck?” Steve says and tips his head back so he can get a better look at him.</p><p>Bucky watches him quietly, his slate grey eyes bright even in the dark interior of the car. Bucky is his love, his best friend, his favorite secret service agent. He’s the reason Steve gets out of bed in the morning and, sometimes, the reason he falls into bed at night. He couldn’t do this—couldn’t run the free world—without him.</p><p>It’s reckless and selfish, but Steve knows there’s something for that. There’s a small, velvet box hidden in his bedside table back in the White House for that.</p><p>“Is it hard for you?” Steve asks.</p><p>Bucky frowns—just slightly—and lets his fingers run over Steve’s face. He traces Steve’s crooked nose and the strong line of his jaw, the point of his chin, and the valley just below his mouth.</p><p>“I never wanted you to be a secret,” Steve says. “You have to know that. If it were up to me, everyone would know it. There wouldn’t be a question.”</p><p>Bucky’s frown deepens, but it’s not an upset frown, it’s something—a little quieter, a little more reserved. Then he sighs and shakes his head.</p><p>“This again?”</p><p>“It can’t be easy,” Steve insists.</p><p>“Of course it’s not easy. You’re the President, Steve,” Bucky says. “Presidents don’t...fall in love with their bodyguards.”</p><p>“I was in love with you a lot before that,” Steve says and Bucky gives him a look.</p><p>“Yeah, jackass, I know,” he says. Then he softens. “It’s not easy for you either. I know that. I see it every day.”</p><p>Steve lets out a ragged sigh.</p><p>“That doesn’t matter for me,” Bucky says. “The secret, I mean. I get to see you every day. I get to be with you every day. I get to protect you, Steve. That’s enough for me.”</p><p>Bucky traces the shape of Steve’s mouth with his flesh fingers, stopping at the very tip. Then, without waiting a beat, he leans forward and presses a featherlight kiss to it.</p><p>Steve’s skin warms. His chest comes alive, his heart beating faster, the tips of his fingers seeming to spark with feeling.</p><p>It’s heady, what they have. An endless current of something that refuses to be defined. The nectar of Gods. Bottled ambrosia.</p><p>“I love you,” Steve says, quietly.</p><p>Bucky’s pulled back, but only barely. There’s an inch between them, nothing more.</p><p>“Yeah,” Bucky says, with a warm, fond smile. “Me too, Mr. President.”</p><p>Steve doesn’t like to hear that from everyone—but from him, from this one person, it means everything.</p><p>He twines his fingers into Bucky’s soft, brown hair and tugs him closer, until there’s no room for breath left.</p><p>They kiss sweetly—murmuring and laughing and kissing—until Jarvis pulls the car to a gentle stop.</p><p>They pull away and straighten themselves the best they can and prepare for dinner. Steve feels his shoulders come down, the tension recede from his aching back.</p><p>First, they’ll have their Thursday night.</p><p>And after, they’ll go to the Waldorf Astoria, where Steve will pull Bucky into bed.</p><p>They’ll close the door behind them and hold the world at bay for another day.</p><p>*</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. iii. don't waste your wishes (modern/roommates)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p><b>prompt:</b> balcony + they were roommates (steve/bucky)</p>
  <p>*</p>
</div>The problems, as they stood, were threefold:<p>One. Bucky Barnes was in love.</p><p>Two. Bucky Barnes was in love with his best friend.</p><p>Three. Bucky Barnes was in love with his best friend who was also his roommate.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I can't believe how fun these prompts have been?? Each prompt/AU is about as short as the chapters for Space Oddity were SUPPOSED to be, originally.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong><span class="u">iii. don’t waste your wishes</span> | <span class="u">balcony + they were roommates (steve/bucky)</span> | <span class="u">for @hellodetour</span></strong>
</p><p>*</p><p>The problems, as they stood, were threefold:</p><p>One. Bucky Barnes was in love.</p><p>Two. Bucky Barnes was in love with his best friend.</p><p>Three. Bucky Barnes was in love with his best friend who was also his roommate.</p><p>In the grand scheme of things, this probably didn’t register with like, the impending planetary destruction due to rising global temperatures and the dangerously thinning ozone layer and the impending total and complete collapse of democracy as they knew it, but it definitely ranked in the top ten problems, at least. Maybe even top five.</p><p>Steve was out on another goddamned date with the Wall Street banker, which made four—not that Bucky was counting or acutely aware of every minute that he was gone, or anything—and that was a different kind of problem because Steve rarely let anyone past the second date, let alone the third, and here he was at a goddamned restaurant in TriBeCa with a goddamned Wall Street banker and usually that sort of thing would have made Steve molt with anti-Capitalist righteousness from the first minute, but from what Bucky understands, this guy is like really funny and also really cute.</p><p>Fuck that guy.</p><p>Bucky is also really funny and also really cute and he could work on fucking Wall Street if his brain didn’t fizzle out every time he read the words “capital” and “subsidiary” and “angel investor.” Something something the bull market and hedge funds and fiduciary duty.</p><p>Like, okay, he could never take Steve out to Cipriani and with his Brooklyn high school science teacher salary he could maybe afford to buy Steve a slightly lurid sweater from Nordstrom when they have their annual sale, but that’s not to say they couldn’t have fun just grabbing a dollar slice from the shitty, greasy 24 hour pizza joint around the corner.</p><p>In fact they <em>had</em> done that just the night before. And last week. And three nights the week before.</p><p>Bucky’s been busy, staying late at school and helping coach the debate club and helping his students with their science fair projects and Steve’s been staying late at the advertising firm he dedicates his considerable talents to, so they haven’t had much time in passing to really see each other or like, catch up, but Steve is an insomniac and Bucky routinely gets hungry at 11 pm, so at least they have that.</p><p>It’s not really enough—god, it doesn’t come close to enough—but Bucky wouldn’t trade those nights for near anything. Just him and Steve, walking out of their shitty fourth story Brooklyn walk-up at 11 pm, their puffy coats on, thick scarves wrapped around their necks to protect against the bitter mid-January wind, shuffling down the block to greet Sal and uncrumple a $5 bill that gets them two slices of greasy cheese pizza each and one large bottle of Coke to share. They sit at the bust up red-vinyl booth near the window and lean close together and it’s nearly disgusting and their bodies definitely hate them for it, but for an hour they just sit there with grease on their fingertips and cheese on their tongues and laugh about how stupid they were in middle school when Steve thought he would be the president of the entire country and Bucky his dedicated bodyguard.</p><p>Anyway, nothing’s exactly turned out the way they expected it to and Bucky has a bum left arm to prove it, but what they have is good. What they have is all Bucky really wants or needs in this weird, stressful, fucked up world.</p><p>Well, almost.</p><p>He drags on his puffy jacket, grabs a bottle of beer from the fridge, shoves open the glass sliding door, and lets himself out onto the balcony.</p><p><br/>It’s dumb to be out on a night as cold as this, but Steve’s not back from his date yet and Bucky’s chest hurts from waiting. He supposes he could do something similar. Open up one of those apps and swipe on someone and take them out for an evening, for a night. He had done that plenty when they were younger—his college days and as he was doing his Master’s, a flash of a smile to Steve and styling his gelled curls just right for whatever guy or girl was the lucky recipient of Bucky Barnes that evening. It had been fun and he had been prolific, but it had never been anything serious. How could it have been, when the only person he had wanted to really take out had always looked up at him from the beat up couch, eyes a bright blue, and wished him luck? Bucky had always waited a beat at the door, but Steve had never stopped him.</p><p>Well anyway, that was then and Bucky supposes he’s paying for it now. It had seemed a lot more exciting, before, to meet people, to date just for the sake of dating. These days, he can’t think of something he’s more bored by. Striking up a lukewarm, superficial conversation with a stranger seems so banal when he could be at home on the couch with Steve, shoving him into the cushions and arguing about Lord of the Rings for the 700th time.</p><p>“God you’re depressing,” Bucky says out loud to himself. He tips the bottle back against his mouth and swallows and this is a mistake too—it’s too cold to drink anything that isn’t steaming at this point. Well, whatever. “Pathetic too. Don’t forget that.”</p><p>Maybe it’s because the New Year just passed or maybe because everyone on his Instagram is now engaged, married, or having babies, but he’s been a lot more maudlin lately than he cares to be. Bucky thinks it’s just Seasonal Affective Disorder, but Sam calls it You Are In Love With Your Best Friend and Too Stubborn To Do Anything About It You Goddamned Motherfucking Dumbass.</p><p>Bucky glares at the cold air in front of him.</p><p>“What do you know!” he mutters, a little too loudly. “Just because you married your college sweetheart! And are madly in love with her! And happy!”</p><p>His glare intensifies.</p><p>“Stupid Wilson,” he mutters to his bottle.</p><p>Somewhere in Harlem, Sam’s ears are probably burning.</p><p>Somewhere in Brooklyn, Bucky takes another drink.</p><p><br/>He doesn’t know how long he stands out there, shoved up against the thin iron railing, drinking his shitty beer, and actively trying not to wonder whether Steve’s date has taken him back to his penthouse Chelsea apartment. He does know that when he hears the glass door scrape open behind him, not only are his hands nearly frozen solid around the glass bottle, every single inch of his body aches.</p><p>His 30s are going to be an absolute bitch if the waning years of his 20s are anything to go by.</p><p>“Hey,” a familiar voice says. “You know it’s the middle of winter, right?”</p><p>Bucky’s eyes flutter closed. He tries to swallow the hot embers of jealousy without burning his throat.</p><p>“That’s so weird,” he manages to say. “Is that why I’m losing feeling in my fingertips?”</p><p>“Don’t joke about that,” Steve says, darkly. He plods across the small stretch of balcony and shoves up against the railing too. He’s close enough to Bucky that Bucky feels his warmth just out of reach, but not so close that there isn’t distance between them.</p><p>These days, all Bucky feels is that distance.</p><p>God. What a shitty thing, to be in love with your best friend.</p><p>“Remember when that happened to me?” Steve says. “Because of the hypothermia? It sucked. I thought my fingers were going to fall off.”</p><p>“Who the fuck,” Bucky says hotly. “Told you to start a snow fight in the middle of December without a coat on, Rogers? Who? Tell me who.”</p><p>Steve’s face goes crooked with a smile as familiar to Bucky as his own reflection. Steve rubs his nose, although it’s probably from the cold rather than anything resembling accepting responsibility for the consequences of his own goddamned, motherfucking actions.</p><p>“Well,” Steve says. “There was snow on the ground. And it was the middle of December. Also I was thirteen.”</p><p>“Those are sentences, sure,” Bucky says.</p><p>“What was I going to do, <em>not</em> start a snowball fight?” Steve says and Bucky turns to stare at him. His eyes are bugging out of his head. He’s going to actually fling his best friend and the love of his life off this balcony, like, he’s <em>actually</em> going to do it.</p><p>Bucky must look as outraged as he feels because Steve’s expression crumples from whatever borderline abashment it was trying on to pure, unadulterated hysteria. He laughs so hard, he nearly doubles over from it.</p><p>“I hate you so goddamned much,” Bucky says, without a lick of heat.</p><p>There are tears in Steve’s eyes and when he eventually straightens, he has to wipe them away with the back of his dry, cracked winter hands.</p><p>“God, thanks,” he says. “I needed that.”</p><p>Bucky lets his indignation ebb away. He shuffles just an inch closer and nudges Steve’s shoulder with his own.</p><p>“Everything okay?”</p><p>Steve lets out a soft hum, settling down.</p><p>“Yeah,” he says.</p><p>Bucky waits him out. It never takes more than a minute.</p><p>Sure enough, a minute later, Steve’s shoulders slump.</p><p>“No,” he says.</p><p>“Wanna talk about it?” Bucky asks.</p><p>Steve rubs his palm against his cold, pink nose again. He tries to hide his shiver, but Bucky notices it anyway. He notices everything about Steve.</p><p>Bucky sighs and puts his bottle on the ledge. This is a stupid idea in a long list of stupid ideas, but that’s never stopped him before and it’s definitely not going to stop him now.</p><p>He shuffles to the side and before Steve can say anything or protest, Bucky is behind him, wrapping him from behind, cocooning Steve inside his own puffy coat.</p><p>“Hey—Buck—!” Steve tries to protest, but his voice is muffled into the inside of Bucky’s coat and the two of them are pressed against the railing. Steve makes some grumbling noises, but after a bit of shuffling and some adjusting, Bucky’s arms are around his waist and the two of them are sharing body heat.</p><p>Steve has grown since high school, but not so much that Bucky can’t rest his chin nearly on the top of his head. It’s his favorite place to be.</p><p>Steve lets out another sigh, accepting the cuddling—comfort!—for what it is.</p><p>“It’s not going to work out,” he says.</p><p>“What’s not?” Bucky asks.</p><p>“The banker,” Steve says.</p><p>Bucky tries not to suck in a breath. Somewhere below, his heart is clattering around in his chest. He hopes Steve can’t hear it.</p><p>“Oh?” Bucky says carefully. “Why not?”</p><p>Steve shrugs.</p><p>“We’re just not...compatible,” he says.</p><p>“You were compatible enough for four dates,” Bucky says. He pauses. “More than usual.”</p><p>“Yeah, I guess,” Steve says. “I thought maybe there was something there. He was smart and funny and even though he works for the literal devil, his politics weren’t bad.”</p><p>“Uh huh,” Bucky says.</p><p>“He had nice eyes,” Steve murmurs. “Blue. And his brown hair was wavy, so soft.”</p><p>Bucky’s stomach tightens.</p><p>“He had this little dimple in his chin,” Steve says softly.</p><p>Bucky can’t hear this.</p><p>He knows he put himself into this position and he’s literally wrapped around Steve, but he can’t—fucking do this.</p><p>His mouth is dry, his heart rocketing in his terrible, horrible, hurting chest.</p><p>Steve is still for a moment. Just pure, shockingly still.</p><p>“He asked me to go back home with him,” Steve says. “A sure thing. He was nice and charming and funny and he tried to kiss me and I—froze. I pushed him away.”</p><p>Bucky doesn’t want to hear this.</p><p>He can’t do this again; can’t do this anymore. Steve with other men, Steve with other women. Steve going home with them. Kissing them. <em>Having feelings for them.</em></p><p>“Steve,” he says and suddenly lets go. He backs away.</p><p>“Bucky,” Steve says. Slowly, he turns around.</p><p>Bucky’s not so much of a coward that he bolts inside, but it’s a close thing. Steve’s head is tucked down for a moment and Bucky sees it then—his hands curled into tight fists. When he looks back up, it hits Bucky in the center of his chest. Steve’s eyes, shining in the moonlight. Steve’s mouth, drawn in a thin line. His eyebrows drawn together, with a furrow in between. Steve looks as though he’s gearing up for a fight. He looks as though he’s breaking his own heart.</p><p>“What—” Bucky says.</p><p>“When are you going to look at me, Buck?” Steve asks. His voice is tight.</p><p>“What?” Bucky says again.</p><p>“It’s—just tell me when,” Steve says. He clenches and unclenches his fists. Opens his palms and stares at them. “I can’t keep turning down people for you. Giving people half a chance only to push them away because I think—because I wonder—”</p><p>Bucky’s head is buzzing. He doesn’t understand what’s happening.</p><p>“Is it ever going to be my time?” Steve says, softly. Bucky doesn’t know where to look, so he looks at him—looks at his golden, shining, best friend. Steve is no coward, so he looks up at him too and what Bucky sees there, what is written across his face—</p><p>It’s so transparent as to be breathtaking.</p><p>“If it isn’t, then I deserve to know,” Steve says. He’s doing that thing where he gulps in breaths so that he doesn’t cry. “If you’re never going to love me back, then I need to know now.”</p><p>Bucky stares at him then, his fair, blond hair glinting under the moon. Steve with his nose pink from the cold, his jaw trembling from anger and frustration and—his chest heaving, with emotion.</p><p>All of those years of wishing he could just tell Steve his feelings, that he could turn the doorknob, open the door to his room, and peel back the covers like they were ten again and slip in beside him.</p><p>All of those years of <em>wanting</em>, of thinking just anything would be enough.</p><p>“Is that it?” Bucky says and is surprised to find his voice is hoarse. “You think I don’t love you?”</p><p>Steve shifts on his feet uncomfortably.</p><p>“What else could it be?” he says. “Why else don’t you look at me?”</p><p>It’s—the thought is so ludicrous as to be laughable. But Bucky doesn’t laugh, because this is no laughing matter.</p><p>It’s stupid, is what it is. It’s stupid that he has spent years loving Steve and that Steve has spent years loving him and never once have they thought to just tell each other this.</p><p>Bucky is to Steve within seconds, his cold fingers against Steve’s face, tilting it up toward him.</p><p>“You’re a goddamned fool, Rogers,” Bucky says. “Just a complete, brainless idiot.”</p><p>“Hey,” Steve says with a glare that couldn’t heat a molecule. “Mean.”</p><p>Bucky smiles. He—Jesus Christ, he laughs in relief, and then he <em>smiles</em>.</p><p>He crowds Steve back against the railing, his fingers still on Steve’s cold face, Steve’s hands now scrabbling on his waist. Steve lets him. He looks up at Bucky and the earlier anguish is gone, his expression now—almost bright with hope.</p><p>“Do you think I like getting indigestion at two in the morning?” Bucky says.</p><p>Steve frowns.</p><p>“Do you think my hips crave pizza slices four times a week?” he asks.</p><p>Steve looks dubious.</p><p>“Those nights with you are my favorite time of the day,” Bucky breathes out, smiling. “I never say no. And do you know why?”</p><p>“Because of the hip thing?” Steve says. He’s starting to grin now too.</p><p>Bucky can feel it—the way his pulse is racing in his throat. He can feel it too—the way Steve’s pulse is doing the same.</p><p>“No, asshole, I like my hips the way they are,” Bucky says. He cups Steve’s face. “It’s because it’s just the two of us.” He pauses. “It’s because I love you.”</p><p>Steve’s nose doesn’t just turn pink, his entire face does. His fair, pale skin turns bright with it; he nearly glows.</p><p>He makes a pleased, satisfied sort of sound that could either be a squeak or a sigh of relief.</p><p>“Yeah?” Steve says.</p><p>“Yeah,” Bucky says. He smiles. It’s so wide, it’s nearly goofy. “Also it’s the hip thing.”</p><p>Steve laughs at that, bright and loud, and Bucky, by god, Bucky leans forward and finally kisses him.</p><p><br/>It’s a cold, frigid night and they don’t develop hypothermia, but they come close. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Bucky presses Steve against the rail and Steve winds his arms around Bucky’s shoulders and they kiss on a balcony in the middle of January. Kiss until their cheeks turn pink, their hair windswept, their fingers stiff with cold. They kiss until they’re left nearly breathless and before they’re done kissing, they feel snow start to fall.</p><p><br/>It’s about as perfect a night as they can manage.</p><p>After, they bundle up warmer, pulling their thick scarves tight around their necks, walk down the four flights of stairs, and trudge down the block to their favorite greasy, shitty 24 hour pizza place.</p><p>*</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This is literally more fluff than I have ever written in my entire life.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. iv. enterlude (shrunkyclunks exes to lovers)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p><b>prompt:</b> bodega + exes to lovers (steve/bucky)</p>
  <p>*</p>
</div>He is inconsolably, terribly, horribly hung up over his ex.<p>It doesn’t help that his ex is his co-worker. </p><p>It doesn’t help that his ex is Captain Fucking America.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>How shocking to report that this "prompt" absolutely got away from me.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><span class="u"> <strong>iv. enterlude</strong> </span> <strong> | </strong> <span class="u"> <strong>bodega + exes to lovers (steve/bucky)</strong> </span> <strong> | </strong> <span class="u"> <strong>for @madam_michael</strong> </span></p><p>*</p><p>On the long list of things Bucky will never admit to his younger sister, are the following: 1) that at age 31 he’s no longer able to digest lactose at the same rapid rate he had when he was younger; 2) that it <em>was</em> him who had “borrowed” (indefinitely) her CD of *NSYNC’s greatest album <em>No Strings Attached</em>; 3) that the hair she had plucked out of his head over Christmas was not, in fact, “very light brown so light that it looks grey in the wrong light but definitely is light brown and not grey”; 4) that he does, on occasion, miss what he secretly considers to be her wildly funny sense of humor; and, finally, but certainly not lastly, 5) that he is inconsolably, terribly, horribly hung up over his ex.</p><p>It doesn’t help that his ex is his co-worker.</p><p>It doesn’t help that his ex is Captain Fucking America.</p><p>It’s not fair, is the thing. Because Bucky had been absolutely content to keep his personal and his professional lives clearly and distinctly separate. He had given SHIELD four years of his life straight out of college, testing off the charts on their recruitment exam, passing their field courses with unspeakably high marks, and performing on missions with such marked ease that even the Black Fucking Widow had once raised her terrifying red eyebrows at him across the quinjet back from Belarus and said, with some genuine effort, “Nice.”</p><p>Bucky had risen quickly through SHIELD’s ranks, had made himself indispensable, had shoved and sniped his way onto the A-team, comprised of a man in a flying, blasting Iron Suit, a literal Norse God, and a scientist so infected with gamma radiation that he was an indestructible force of green muscle.</p><p>He had had everything professionally he could have dreamed of and when he peeled out of his SHIELD suit at the end of the day and hung it in his locker, he was able to happily and peaceably go home to a gorgeous Brooklyn apartment with a functioning elevator and a remarkable square footage and the perfect, white cat.</p><p>Then he met Steve fucking Rogers.</p><p>It’s not that Steve was horrible or even that Steve had ruined Bucky’s life.</p><p>It’s that Steve Rogers, with his soft blue eyes and his slightly crooked nose and his pink lips that curved up at the corners when he was offering a self-deprecating smile and his biceps the size of a fucking tree trunk, was cracked out of an iceberg, dusted off, and handed a red-white-and-blue suit so lurid that Bucky had straight up laughed in his face for it.</p><p>It hadn’t been the kindest of introductions, but it had, apparently been the one Steve had needed. He had run a hand through his stupid, glinting, blond hair, which stuck to his forehead when it was the least bit humid—just a single lock curling from sweat against his temple—and looked up at Bucky through fair eyelashes half a mile fucking long and Bucky’s stomach had flipped in on itself. Just upside-down, inside-out, a horde of butterflies taking up residence where his spleen had been and shoving erratically and frantically against his fucking ribcage.</p><p>Well one thing led to another and Nicholas J. Fury was like what if I ruined Agent Barnes’s life and four missions and two shared hotel rooms later, Bucky literally was going to claw his eyeballs out if Steve didn’t shove him up against a door somewhere and shove his very large hand down the front of Bucky’s pants.</p><p>Luckily—or unluckily, depending on how you looked at it—Captain fucking America seemed to be on the exact same page, because after a disastrous mission in the middle of fucking Lisbon, Steve had given him a borderline inappropriate look of pure heat and an unspoken amount of sexual frustration and by the time they had gotten back to their shared hotel room, his fingers were curled into the front of Bucky’s suit, threatening to tear into the fabric, and his thigh was shoved in between Bucky’s legs, and Bucky’s hand was unrelenting in blond hair as their mouths crashed together in frantic hunger and a light dash of frustration.</p><p>It was fucking awesome.</p><p>And it had stayed that way longer than Bucky could ever have imagined.</p><p>Three years Bucky was with Steve and it was nothing short of perfect. They loved each other, but more importantly, they liked each other. It was long missions and late night dinners, greasy takeout and watching movies, sprawled across each other, on each other’s couches. It was stolen kisses in Central Park and being embarrassing tourists in every corner of the city they had both grown up in and holding hands while leaning against a railing, overlooking the Hudson at sunset. It was sex against Bucky’s fridge, and sex on the hotel room couch, and sex on most surfaces in Steve’s floor in the Tower. It was trusting Bucky to watch his back with guns aimed at his temple and waking up in Steve’s arms after a hard mission gone absolutely wrong.</p><p>It was clearing out a closet so that Steve could leave his stupid khakis and embarrassing button up shirts, and leaving space in the cup in his bathroom for an extra toothbrush.</p><p>It was kissing in the cold night air, fireworks sparking around them, as their friends called the New Year in.</p><p>It was all of that, until, suddenly, it wasn’t.</p><p>Then it was a bad mission and another bad mission and taking their tempers out on each other. Fighting in their apartment and fighting in the Tower and Steve getting on his motorcycle more nights to go and cool off than coming back to bed after a fight.</p><p>Eventually, three perfect years came to a perfectly terrible head.</p><p>Bucky doesn’t like to think about it.</p><p>He had stayed in bed for a week straight and when Natasha had texted him asking him if he was still alive, he hadn’t known what to say. <em>No</em> had seemed a little fucking dramatic, but tell that to his broken fucking heart.</p><p>But time heals most things, or at least makes things slightly less fatal than they feel at the beginning of an end.</p><p>One month passed and then another, and then it’s been six months and he’s survived, he guesses, the end of a relationship that should have been forever. That he thought was going to be forever.</p><p>Whatever.</p><p>It’s midnight and he desperately needs a pint of Ben &amp; Jerry’s, a bag of Takis, and a fist full of Sour Patch Kids. The food of the depressed. He should probably pick up some milk and bread for the next week too.</p><p>He shoves on a soft hoodie that is two sizes too big for him, that he realizes too late Does Not Belong to Him, and shoves his feet into a pair of beat up red converses.</p><p>Bucky tugs the hood of the sweatshirt up, sticks his hands into the pockets, and walks from his apartment down the three blocks to his favorite bodega.</p><p><br/>The sixth item on the list of things he will never admit to Rebecca Anne Barnes is this: that two months after the break up that shattered his entire heart, Bucky thought he could cover up some of that scarring through the tried and proven millennial angst of 21st century dating. If his sister had gotten wind of this terrible and, frankly, stupid idea, she would have likely told him some things such as: 1) you cannot get over a broken heart through sex with strangers and 2) you can get over a broken heart through therapy, which I have been begging you to go to for years, and 3) there is no one worth dating on any app you can download to your smart phone.</p><p>So he told his younger sister nothing and for the months of May through July he had attempted to “date.” It hadn’t gone terribly well. There was the blonde kindergarten teacher who only wanted to meet at a cat cafe, the NYU PhD student studying Shakespearean Theater who spent the entire date speaking in a fake British accent, the Broadway actor who tried to give him a handjob in the bathroom of a burrito place, and the Wall Street banker who was hot and spoke in a normal accent, but thought the mark of an interesting conversation was how many times he could bring up his 401K.</p><p>All in all, Bucky’s foray into the dating world was about as disastrous as the results of the summer he was convinced he could pull off bleached blond hair. That is to say he is now deeply committed to celibacy and may never willingly interact with another human again.</p><p>Anyway, his life is horribly tragic and the only way he can soothe the lamentations of his 31st year of life is through mouth-burningly spicy chips and a pint of Chunky Monkey. It’s not a lot he asks for.</p><p>So tell him why, as he’s blankly staring into the frosted-over freezer in Ahmed’s bodega, contemplating the treacherous trajectory of his life and his top ten ice cream flavors, he hears, in a semi-familiar voice, someone say: “James?”</p><p>Bucky freezes. He’s staring at Stephen Colbert’s face on Americone Dream and he freezes.</p><p>He slowly turns around, a brittle, slightly panicked smile on his face.</p><p>“Oh, hey,” he says. He quickly tries to run through a list of possible names in his head—Hayden, Aiden...Jaiden? Gary?</p><p>“Kevin,” the curly-haired blond man says and Bucky panics for another reason.</p><p>He went on a date with a man named <em>Kevin</em>? Just being given the name Kevin is a red flag, just how depressed and out of standards was he in May?</p><p>“Oh...yeah,” Bucky says, flashing a smile. “Kevin. Of course. How are you?”</p><p>“Great!” Kevin says brightly. “Just picking up some midnight essentials.”</p><p>He has in his hands: a bag of corn nuts, a pack of gum, and a small box of baking soda.</p><p>Bucky stares at him.</p><p>Kevin does not seem to notice. Instead, his smile—too familiar by half—widens.</p><p>“Say,” Kevin says. “I was thinking about our date.”</p><p>Their date, as Bucky recalls—and he can’t, not really, because it was like four months and two post-break up hairstyles ago—had consisted of a very bland dinner at a very bland restaurant in the Upper East side, where Kevin wore a very bland suit and told very bland stories and at the end, when Bucky could not have been more bored out of his entire fucking mind and had almost called Becca for an SOS assist he would have regretted his entire life, had kissed Bucky on the mouth in a manner that was so bland Bucky had forgotten mid-kiss that they were kissing at all.</p><p>“Yup,” Bucky says then, in what turns out to be an enormous mistake. “Me too. Definitely.”</p><p>“Oh!” Kevin says, way too eager. His bland features light up. “Really? You too? Oh gosh, I thought maybe you weren’t feeling it and that’s why I never followed up. I’m so relieved you feel the same way—I mean, if you’ve been thinking about it too, then that has to mean something, right?”</p><p>“Uh,” Bucky says, mouth open.</p><p>“It’s just, I couldn’t get it out of my head and I couldn’t get you out of my head and our kiss—I’ve never felt anything like that before.” Kevin pauses, nearly breathless. “Have you?”</p><p>“Uh,” Bucky says again.</p><p>Kevin flushes with pleasure.</p><p>“I knew it,” he says. “I was a fool. I should have texted you back immediately. Gosh, I’m so glad we ran into each other here.”</p><p>Bucky doesn’t get the chance to say anything, not that he would have known what to say even if he had.</p><p>“Listen,” Keving says and he lowers his voice in a way someone, at some point, might have erroneously told him was sexy. “I know it’s pretty late and I don’t usually do this, but my apartment is just a few blocks away...”</p><p>Now, Bucky is a SHIELD agent. He eats HYDRA agents for breakfast. He has the perfect sniper shot and he can kind of hack and he knows how to dismantle a bomb in fifteen seconds flat.</p><p>Bucky starts to panic.</p><p>He cannot, absolutely fucking <em>cannot</em> sleep with a man named Kevin.</p><p>He opens his mouth and backs away and Kevin looks at him like a shark eyeing fresh meat and Bucky’s brain starts to scream sirens and he panics and he’s going to say yes oh god he’s going to sleep with a man named Kevin who wears flip flops in the middle of winter and collects LEGO miniatures—when suddenly he feels a strong arm slide across his shoulders.</p><p>What the—?</p><p>“Babe, I got the Takis,” a familiar—god, deeply familiar—voice says.</p><p>Bucky turns his head, his heart clattering in his chest. His cheeks heat up and his eyes are nearly bugging out of his head as Steve gives him a lazy grin.</p><p>“Sorry it took so long,” his ex says. “I tried to get you the big bag.”</p><p>Kevin frowns at them.</p><p>“James? Who’s this?”</p><p>Bucky opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, Steve bends down and kisses him on the fucking mouth.</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>
  <em>Oh fuck.</em>
</p><p>Bucky’s heart is going to beat out of his fucking chest.</p><p>“Hi,” Steve says, grinning and turning to Kevin. He offers him a hand. “Captain America—sorry, Steve. Bucky’s boyfriend.”</p><p>Now, not too many people know that Captain America is an absolute little shit. Bucky Barnes does because that’s one of the reasons Bucky Barnes fell in love with him. Still, it’s one thing to be a known little shit in intimate circles and another to be in a fucking bodega at midnight, with a confused looking man staring at you, and a shit-eating grin on your face, your enormous arm around your ex-boyfriend, rescuing him, while being a complete little shit in public.</p><p>Bucky is going to kill him.</p><p>Bucky is going to kiss him again.</p><p>Bucky is head-over-heels, desperately in love with his ex-boyfriend.</p><p>This is all kinds of probably avoidable problems and maybe, in the future, Bucky will consult his baby sister before making a single decision for himself.</p><p>“Bucky?” Kevin says, with a frown. His eyes flicker in deepening confusion between Bucky and Steve.</p><p>“Oh, that’s what his <em>friends</em> call him,” Steve says, with a broad grin. Then he turns his face toward Bucky, all fond affection and something hard in his eyes that makes Bucky shiver. “And his boyfriend. Of course.”</p><p>Bucky tries to glare at him inconspicuously, but Steve’s grin takes on a sharp edge.</p><p>Absolute little shit.</p><p>“Yeah,” Bucky says, slowly. “My boyfriend.”</p><p>Steve’s grip on his shoulder tightens.</p><p>“Okay, well,” Kevin says. He looks between the two of them and he looks at Steve’s hand, which is <em>not</em> holding Takis and he looks back between them again. “This is about as awkward a midnight encounter as I’m willing to have, so uh. Bye, James.”</p><p>Steve suppresses a cackle, Bucky can <em>feel</em> it.</p><p>“Bye, Melvin!”</p><p>“Steve!” Bucky hisses, elbowing him, while Steve snickers loudly.</p><p>
  <em>Absolute shit!</em>
</p><p>Kevin disappears quickly around the corner before Bucky lets out a much-aggrieved sigh and buries his face in his hands.</p><p>“Unbelievable,” he mutters.</p><p>“You left the freezer door open,” Steve observes.</p><p>Bucky reemerges from his hands and glares up at his ex before pulling away.</p><p>“I was in the middle of getting ice cream to dr—” Bucky starts and immediately changes directions. “Eat.”</p><p>“From the bodega?” Steve asks.</p><p>“Ahmed and I have an understanding,” Bucky says.</p><p>“At midnight?” Steve raises an eyebrow.</p><p>“That’s the perfect time to eat ice cream, jackass,” Bucky gripes.</p><p>Steve’s mouth quirks up at the corners.</p><p>“In my sweatshirt?”</p><p>Bucky opens his mouth. Bucky closes it.</p><p>Bucky stares down at his sweatshirt that has <em>CAPTAIN AMERICA</em> emblazoned across the front in bold lettering and glares up at Steve.</p><p>“Why do you even have a sweatshirt with your own superhero name on it, Steve? That’s very arrogant of you. It is, as the kids say, not a good look.”</p><p>“Tony gave it to me,” Steve says, with a shrug. “He thought it would be funny.”</p><p>“I hate your friends,” Bucky announces and turns back to the freezer. He opens the case, grabs the nearest Ben &amp; Jerry’s pint he can find—Phish Food, not bad—and closes it hard. Then he starts stomping away.</p><p>“Bucky!” Steve calls and after a moment follows him.</p><p>Bucky stalks around the bodega, grabbing the essentials—<em>two</em> bags of Takis, an enormous bag of Sourpatch Kids, a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, three Twix bars, and a loaf of multigrain bread—and shoves them at Ahmed at the counter.</p><p>“Quick,” he says to Ahmed. “My ex is stalking me. Can you call the cops?”</p><p>“I do not think I can call the cops on Captain America, Bucky,” Ahmed says, pleasantly.</p><p>Bucky glares at Ahmed.</p><p>“I don’t think you two have the understanding you think you do,” Steve says at his shoulder.</p><p>Ahmed puts everything into a plastic bag and Bucky shoves $17.72 at him and then turns back to Steve.</p><p>“I have to go home now,” Bucky says slowly. “To my home. The place you left. I have to eat my two bags of Takis and full pint of ice cream and enough handfuls of candy to pass out on my bed from a sugar coma that is absolutely not related to you.”</p><p>Steve blinks at him—just a look of pure, sweet surprise flashing across his face—and it makes Bucky so angry he shoves past him and out the door into the cold.</p><p> </p><p>It takes twenty seconds for Steve to follow him.</p><p>“Bucky!” he calls. He runs after Bucky, who’s halfway down the block by now, panting slightly from the effort. “Bucky! <em>Buck</em>. Please, wait. Stop! <em>Bucky.</em>”</p><p>Steve’s large hand is on Bucky’s elbow and Bucky stops suddenly and wheels around to face him. His face is red and his eyes are wild and his heart is beating furiously in his chest.</p><p>His body aches and his heart hurts and he’s horrified because Steve is in front of him and he just rescued him from a terrible former Grindr date and he’s tall and handsome and fucking perfect. He’s beautiful and he’s funny and he’s the man of his fucking <em>dreams</em> and Bucky had him, he had had him for <em>three fucking years</em>, and he couldn’t make it work. They couldn’t make it work.</p><p>And now someone else was going to come along and they were going to winnow their way into Steve’s heart and they would be everything for him that Bucky couldn’t be and Bucky would have to watch, he would have to <em>watch that happen</em> and he would have to pretend to be happy because they were still fucking colleagues and Bucky wanted Steve to be happy, he really did, he was still Bucky’s best friend, he was still the love of Bucky’s life, Bucky was still in love with him, he was still so fucking in love—</p><p>Bucky heaves in a deep, embarrassing breath.</p><p>“Fuck,” he says.</p><p>He drops his bag to the ground and shoves his palms into his eyes.</p><p>“<em>Fuck</em>.”</p><p>“Buck,” Steve says, gently. “Hey.”</p><p>Bucky refuses to listen, refuses to look up at him, until Steve is suddenly there, in front of him, his familiar fingers prying Bucky’s hands away from his eyes.</p><p>“Bucky, will you look at me?” Steve says. And then, “Will you listen to me?”</p><p>Bucky shakes his head. He’s still pulling in rattling breaths, his chest sticky with terrible, complicated emotions.</p><p>Steve brushes his fist against Bucky’s chin and gently bumps his face up so that he’s looking at him. There’s no escape.</p><p>“Sorry,” Bucky says—croaks, really. He swallows. “Fuck. I’m a mess. Steve, you shouldn’t—”</p><p>Steve’s hand clamps over Bucky’s mouth.</p><p>“Bucky Barnes, if you don’t let me talk I’m going to call Natasha and tell her who took her yogurt from the break room.”</p><p>Bucky’s eyes widen in horror.</p><p>Steve offers him a grin before it slides off his face, expression softening into something smaller, something sadder. He lets Bucky’s mouth go.</p><p>“I told myself if I ever saw you again, I wouldn’t be a coward.”</p><p>Bucky frowns.</p><p>“What? We see each other every day, Steve,” he says. “We work together.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know,” Steve huffs out. He sighs. “Not that. Other than that. I told myself if I ran into you out here, in the real world, where things matter less and...also matter more. If the world, or the fates, or whatever, brought us together again—just by chance, then it would be stupid of me not to do it. That I <em>had</em> to do it, I couldn’t let the chance go.”</p><p>“Do it?” Bucky asks, confused. “What chance? Do what?”</p><p>Steve looks at him.</p><p>“Beg you to forgive me.”</p><p>Bucky swallows. His heart is doing a weird thing in his chest. There’s a faint buzzing sound in his head.</p><p>“Steve,” he murmurs.</p><p>Steve sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It’s grown longer in the last six months, shaggier, with just a hint of a wave at the bottom, where it brushes the top of his broad shoulders.</p><p>“I don’t believe in fate, though,” Steve says, with an abashed smile. “Or the world or energy or...I don’t know. It’s hard to trust things like that when you’ve been frozen in an iceberg for the better part of a century.”</p><p>“What are you talking about, Rogers?”</p><p>Steve groans and rubs his eyes.</p><p>“I don’t live in this neighborhood, Bucky. I don’t make it a habit of going to the bodega at midnight for Takis.”</p><p>Bucky sucks in a breath.</p><p>“I remembered how much you went there,” Steve says, looking at him again. “So I asked Ahmed to help. And he told me some...guesses. About when you might be around.”</p><p>Bucky stares at him.</p><p>“You asked...my bodega man to help engineer your way out of fate so that you could...run into me? In the middle of the night, with a pint of ice cream and spicy rolled tortilla chips?”</p><p>“For the purpose of begging you to forgive me,” Steve says. He laughs, but there’s no mirth there. It’s all sincerity. It’s all nerves. “Yeah. That about summarizes it.”</p><p>Bucky doesn’t know what to say. He’s not sure there <em>is</em> a right thing to say, in such a bizarre, unbelievable situation.</p><p>Steve lets out a deep breath through his nose. His broad shoulders are tense. It’s a cool night, but his hair is curling, just a single floop in the middle of his forehead.</p><p>Bucky <em>aches</em> for him.</p><p>“We...fought so much, Steve,” he says, swallowing. “We took out our anger on each other. Steve, we were so unkind to each other.”</p><p>“I know,” Steve says.</p><p>“We were miserable,” Bucky whispers.</p><p>“But we were happy, too,” Steve says. He doesn’t take his eyes off Bucky. His hands are out, his palms up. “We were happy for a lot longer than we weren’t.”</p><p>Bucky swallows again. He doesn’t know.</p><p>“I was in the ice for seventy years,” Steve says softly. There’s sadness there, in the lines of his face. Years of lost things and tiny little heartbreaks. “I lost entire ages of the world. I went into the water thinking I was going to die and when I woke up, it was almost as though I had. I had nothing, Bucky.” And then, softer still, “And then I had you.”</p><p>Bucky’s chest hurts. He sucks in another breath and it rattles in his ribcage.</p><p>“We got complacent. We took each other for granted.” Steve gives him a soft, sad smile. “We fucked up, but we won’t do that again. We’ll work harder this time. We’ll <em>talk</em> to each other.”</p><p>It’s a bad idea. Things never happen better the second time around. Nothing ever changes.</p><p>But, still.</p><p>Steve’s eyes glint blue in the dark. The moon catches on his long, golden hair.</p><p>Bucky takes a step forward.</p><p>“I can’t do this without you, Buck,” Steve says. A pause. “I don’t <em>want</em> to do this without you.”</p><p>Bucky takes another step forward. He’s trembling.</p><p>“Give me another chance,” Steve says, voice hoarse. “Give us another chance. I promise, we’ll make it this time.”</p><p>And god, maybe Becca would tell him this is another bad decision. Maybe she would tell him he can’t replace heartbreak with the same person who broke his heart in the first place. He can’t just pick up where they left off and think that everything will be different; that the good things will stay the same and the bad things will go away.</p><p>And maybe she’s right, but maybe she’s wrong.</p><p>Maybe Becca Barnes wouldn’t say any of that at all, because Becca Barnes loves her brother and her brother loves Steve Rogers and at the end of the day, that is the sum-total of what he needs to be happy.</p><p>Maybe Bucky needs to stop using his sister as an excuse for the hard things that he wants. And is willing to work to get.</p><p>His arms are around Steve’s shoulders before he can account for them.</p><p>Steve takes a shaky breath of disbelief and then his hands are pressed to Bucky’s back, his nose pressed to Bucky’s nose, his forehead pressed to Bucky’s forehead.</p><p>Maybe it’s stupid, but maybe they both are. Maybe Bucky will never have better than this and maybe, he doesn’t want anything better than this, either.</p><p>It’s not the worst thing, to give love a second chance.</p><p>“Okay,” Bucky says. “Yes. God, yes.”</p><p>A pause.</p><p>“Really?” Steve breathes out in disbelief.</p><p>“Fuck yes,” Bucky replies and this time it’s with a shaky, relieved laugh.</p><p>He feels lightheaded with relief. His chest is fizzing. He feels—bright, buoyant. Effervescent.</p><p>Steve spins him around. He honest-to-god fucking <em>spins him around</em>. Bucky can’t stop laughing.</p><p>“Take me home, Buck,” Steve says, putting him down. He tightens his grip around Bucky’s waist, their foreheads still pressed together.</p><p>Bucky kisses him. His cold fingers against Steve’s cold face and he kisses him, on the middle of the street, in the middle of the night, in front of Brooklyn and God and everyone else who happens to be passing by.</p><p>“Okay,” Bucky says, pulling back just an inch, breathless and laughing. Happy. “But.”</p><p>Steve’s own happiness dims—just for a fraction of a second.</p><p>“But?”</p><p>Bucky grins and kisses him again.</p><p>“We bring the Takis.”</p><p>Steve laughs and lets him go. He scoops up the dropped groceries and offers Bucky a hand.</p><p>“Done.”</p><p>Bucky takes it happily, thrilled. Thrilled about Steve, thrilled about the snacks.</p><p>Thrilled that the next time he calls Becca, it will be with news that she, too, will be thrilled about.</p><p>*</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. v. a dustland fairytale (nyc/faeries)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p><b>prompt:</b> the city + faeries (steve/bucky)</p>
  <p>*</p>
</div>“Do you believe in magic?” Bucky asks, sitting back on his haunches.<p>Bucky’s too old to believe in that kind of thing. He graduates in a year with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from <i>the</i> Columbia University. He believes in what he can see, in what he can touch and feel.</p>
<p>He can’t believe in magic.</p>
<p>But.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>OKAY I know I literally promised I would not have anything more to post this week, but I lied because yesterday was mambo's birthday, so here is a little gift for her. </p>
<p>Happy Birthday, mambo! May all of the YA books you pick up this year to read be delightful and full of magic and may all 700 of your belugas finally stop reading conspiracy theories. ♥</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span class="u">
    <strong>vi. a dustland fairytale</strong>
  </span>
  <strong> | </strong>
  <span class="u">
    <strong>the city + faeries (stucky)</strong>
  </span>
  <strong> | </strong>
  <span class="u">
    <strong>for @mambo</strong>
  </span>
</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>“You have six months,” the Faerie Queen says. “Six months only and if you are not successful, you will come back. I will hear no more talk of this.”</p>
<p>The Prince bends at the waist, bows his head. His silver crown glints in the dappled light of the setting sun.</p>
<p>“I will not fail,” he says.</p>
<p>The Faerie Queen eyes him with eyes the color of lilacs. She cups a hand and blows faerie dust.</p>
<p><br/>The Prince wakes up in bright morning sunlight.</p>

<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>“This one’s glittering,” Bucky says.</p>
<p>Steve, lying lazily on his back, his delicate arms folded under his head, tilts his head.</p>
<p>“What’s glittering?”</p>
<p>Bucky ignores the slightly amused, faintly incredulous tone of his friend. He’s on his knees in a flower bed, blooms of pink and red and yellow under the unseasonably warm spring sky. It’s been years of winter creeping in between seasons, frost trailing from January to February, the chill of March sinking into cold, wet Aprils. It feels like it’s been years since the city has had a real spring that started before the heat of June suddenly comes upon them, but this year feels different. It’s the beginning of May and the sky is a clear, bright blue and the air is warm and New York City is run over with flowers.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Bucky murmurs. He had been laying down next to Steve, the two of them looking up at the trees, heads bent together, sharing little stories and warm, lazy laughter. He had turned his head toward one of the flower bushes and that’s when he had seen it.</p>
<p>He’s been developing a sixth sense about these things. This is the fourth…<em>thing</em> that he’s found. He can’t explain what they are, really. Only that there’s always something that piques his interest—a little flash or a glimpse, a strange tug at the edge of his consciousness. This time, it looks like a stone of some sort. It’s a pearly, translucent white, oblong in shape and smooth to the touch. It looks like a stone and it feels like a stone, but Bucky doesn’t think it <em>is</em> a stone. Not really.</p>
<p>He can’t explain it. There’s just this feeling he can’t shake, like the stone is heavier than it should be, cooler than most, and wrapped in a feeling of some, inexplicable, unshakable <em>thing</em>.</p>
<p>He frowns and turns it over in his palm.</p>
<p>There are no markings. But it does glitters</p>
<p>“Do you believe in magic?” Bucky asks, sitting back on his haunches.</p>
<p>Bucky’s too old to believe in that kind of thing. He graduates in a year with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from <em>the</em> Columbia University. His brain is full of science and maths, equations and logarithms and angles and hours spent poring over organic chemistry. He believes in what he can see, in what he can touch and feel.</p>
<p>He can’t believe in magic.</p>
<p>But.</p>
<p>“What kind?” Steve asks. His voice is drowsy with the afternoon and Bucky doesn’t have to turn around to see his friend’s eyes fluttering shut.</p>
<p>It had been Steve’s idea to spend the afternoon in Central Park. <em>You study too much</em>, he had complained. <em>If you try to tell me one more thing about another law of thermodynamics, I’m going to scream.</em></p>
<p>So they had packed a little picnic basket full of crackers and cheeses, chocolate chip cookies and little deli sandwiches, a secret bottle of wine disguised as sparkling grape juice, and two books apiece to laze about in the sun and read.</p>
<p>The books lay forgotten, but they had made good on the snacks and wine.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Bucky murmurs, with a slight frown. And he doesn’t. He inspects the stone closely, looking for signs—any sign at all—but all he finds is smooth, milky coloration streaked every so often with a nearly luminescent lilac color. He feels like it’s thrumming, but that’s probably in his mind.</p>
<p>“There’s lots of kinds of magic, Buck,” Steve says. “Sun magic. Friend magic.” He turns his head toward Bucky and Bucky can hear the grin in his voice. “Wine magic.”</p>
<p>Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Maybe there’s a simple explanation for all of this and that explanation isn’t <em>magic</em>. Maybe the explanation is simply: alcohol.</p>
<p>Bucky sighs and straightens. He puts the stone in his pocket anyway.</p>
<p>“That’s my favorite kind of magic,” he says with an easy, broad grin. He folds himself down on the blanket again and Steve moves over for him.</p>
<p>“Wine’s gone,” Steve says, sleepily.</p>
<p>“Did you finish it all?” Bucky asks. He watches his friend’s eyes flutter closed. Steve’s skin is fair and his hair is fair and his eyelashes are fair too. There’s a light—barely there—smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, and when he’s warm, his high cheeks are dusted with a sweet pink blush.</p>
<p>And then there’s that other kind of magic.</p>
<p>Bucky swallows his longing and lays back down.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Steve mumbles. “Would’ve saved it for you, but you went away too long.”</p>
<p>Bucky wrinkles his nose.</p>
<p>“I was away maybe five minutes.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Steve says sleepily. “Like I said. Too long.”</p>
<p>Bucky represses a smile and Steve closes his eyes. He shifts closer, snuggling up to Bucky, and Bucky, with a slight sigh, rolls over so that he can scritch at Steve’s hair, the way he likes it.</p>
<p>Steve’s breathing evens out within a minute.</p>
<p>Bucky smiles at him, shaking his head in fond disbelief.</p>
<p>In his pocket, the stone hums.</p>

<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>He keeps finding them all over the city. It’s the strangest thing.</p>
<p>There’s the stone he finds among the flowers in Central Park, the strange, shimmering copper coin in the fountain at Washington Square Park, what looks like a smooth, silver pendant lying on top of a bench in Prospect Park, and a round, bright blue button on the path in Bryant Park. Steve asks him why he keeps collecting random bits and pieces of New York City trash and Bucky has to admit it’s a fair enough question, but he can’t quite bring himself to explain what he feels—what he <em>knows</em> to be true.</p>
<p>One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, the saying goes. Well these trinkets are neither trash nor treasure. Bucky can feel the power vibrating from them, a spark along his skin when he sinks to his knees, holds his breath, and reaches out for whatever has caught his eye.</p>
<p>Steve never seems to be the one to find the thing. He complains about this one day as they’re licking at ice cream cones from Momofuku and walking through East Village.</p>
<p>Bucky inhales quickly, stopping in the middle of his tracks.</p>
<p>“Buck?” Steve asks, trying to catch a dribble of cereal milk ice cream before it slides down his fingers.</p>
<p>Bucky sees it from across the street, hanging on a sharp iron fence post.</p>
<p>“Bucky, what—” Steve blinks, but Bucky’s across the street immediately, his heart beating quickly in his chest.</p>
<p>It had caught his eye from an entire street away, something winking at him from the iron, that inexplicable <em>tug</em> drawing him forward.</p>
<p>By the time Steve catches up with him, Bucky’s already thrown away the rest of his ice cream cone into the nearest trash receptacle and is now cradling something in his sticky hands.</p>
<p>“What’s that?” Steve asks. He’s not willing to give up <em>his</em> ice cream, so he licks at the edges of the cone while looking over his friend’s shoulder.</p>
<p>“It’s—” Bucky says and frowns. His heart is beating so fast. He feels...weird. Strange, but in a good way. It’s radiating through his arms, resonating in his bones.</p>
<p>“A gold chain?” Steve says. He blinks at Bucky. “It was just hanging here?”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Bucky breathes out. “It was just hanging here.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t think it was just hanging there. He thinks...he’s almost sure now, that it was waiting for <em>him</em>.</p>
<p>He doesn’t know how to describe how he knows and he’s certainly not going to try, but he thinks—he can feel—Bucky <em>knows</em> that this is magic. His teeth rattles with it.</p>
<p>“How come I never find cool things?” Steve whines. It’s a whine stuffed full of ice cream, so it’s not a particularly compelling whine, but it’s a whine nonetheless. “You’re always finding these things everywhere, even when you’re not looking.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Bucky says. His skin tingles and when he swallows, his throat tingles too. He turns back to Steve and Steve looks almost disgruntled. His nose is pink and his face is wrinkled and he has ice cream on his nose.</p>
<p>Bucky nearly sighs.</p>
<p>It’s the cutest thing he’s ever seen.</p>
<p>He puts away the gold chain and reaches out with his thumb.</p>
<p>“Hey!” Steve squeaks and Bucky makes him stand still as he gets the ice cream off his nose.</p>
<p>“There,” he says.</p>
<p>“I’m hungry,” Steve says as he finishes his cone, wipes his hands on the napkin, and throws away the trash.</p>
<p>“You just had ice cream, Steve,” Bucky says.</p>
<p>“That’s not a meal, Bucky,” Steve says. “That’s barely a snack. It’s a pre-snack.”</p>
<p>Bucky lets out an exasperated (fond) sigh and presses a hand to the top of Steve’s silky, smooth hair.</p>
<p>“Want to get dumplings?” he asks.</p>
<p>“Oh!” Steve’s crystal blue eyes brighten. “Yeah!”</p>
<p>Bucky shakes his head. Steve, unthinkingly, takes his hand.</p>
<p>They walk down the streets of East Village toward the nearest Vanessa’s Dumplings, hand-in-hand, like two normal friends.</p>
<p>In his pocket, the gold chain hums.</p>

<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>He finds a little bottle cap that glints gold near the Highline and a single teardrop shaped earring the color of the night sky near the South Seaport. There’s a pearl that’s jet black he picks up from a flower pot outside of a brownstone near Grand Army Plaza and what looks like a small, broken fairy figurine at the base of a tree in Brooklyn Bridge park. That one makes him gasp out a little. The figurine is made of something delicate—porcelain maybe. It’s small enough to fit into the center of his palm and the paint is chipping, but it’s still vibrant. The little figurine has blue eyes the color of the ocean and yellow hair so fair it’s nearly gold.</p>
<p>“Look, Steve,” Bucky laughs out. They’re spending the day in DUMBO and Vinegar Hill, Steve insisting on biking everywhere because the school year is over and the sun is out and he is enjoying greatly the feeling of heat on his poor, pale arms.</p>
<p>“What?” Steve asks. This time he’s eating a bag of freshly baked, small donut rounds. There’s three flavors of sugar dusting the mini donuts—rose, lavender, and honeysuckle. The sugar is all over Steve’s fingertips and, for that matter, all over his mouth.</p>
<p>Bucky grins. He has the distant urge to taste the sugar for himself, directly from the source, but Steve frowns a little, going cross-eyed, and Bucky’s longing dissipates into something lighter. He laughs then he shows Steve his find.</p>
<p>“It looks just like you,” Bucky says.</p>
<p>Steve pauses for a moment.</p>
<p>There’s sugar on his hands and sugar on his mouth and sugar in his hair.</p>
<p>“Oh,” he breathes out lightly. The warm afternoon breeze, skimming off the water, ruffles his blond, nearly golden hair. “You’re right. It does.”</p>
<p>Bucky gives him a smile and pockets the figurine. It feels like a spark against his skin and in his pocket, it seems to vibrate.</p>
<p>This one he keeps for more reason than one.</p>
<p>Like Steve said, there are all sorts of magic.</p>
<p>He takes a mini lavender donut from Steve’s paper bag, feeling immeasurably fond.</p>

<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>The welcome heat of June turns slowly into the heavy, lazy heat of July and then to the oppressive, humid heat of August. They spend most of their time indoors now, because it’s too hot to be outside and even though Bucky’s apartment doesn’t have air conditioning, it does have a very large fan.</p>
<p>He and Steve will open the windows and turn on the fan and sprawl across his bed in nothing but shorts. Bucky doesn’t make a move and Steve is too oblivious to realize that’s even on the table, but it’s too hot, too humid, too miserable besides, so Bucky can’t even mourn his terrible luck.</p>
<p>Months he’s known Steve Rogers and they have become practically inseparable. Wherever Bucky goes, he drags along Steve. Whenever Steve is doing something—painting or reading or eating or just ambling about Manhattan—he immediately texts Bucky and Bucky immediately takes the train down from Morningside Heights to meet him.</p>
<p>Steve is cute and he’s funny and he and Bucky can spend all of their time doing absolutely nothing and be all the happier for it.</p>
<p>Bucky glows warm whenever Steve is near.</p>
<p>Steve tilts his head up toward Bucky, like a flower toward sunlight, and sometimes, when there’s just the hint of a flush across his face, Bucky swears there is nothing he would like better than to kiss it off his cheeks.</p>

<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>The heat eventually breaks, the end of August bringing with it the hint of a cooler autumn. The trees are still a brilliant green and the flower garden in Central Park is still abloom with blues and purples and oranges. The summer is ending and school is beginning again, just around the corner. This will be Bucky’s final year at Columbia. Two more semesters and he’ll be done with this degree and there will be decisions to make, a life to plan out, but for now—for today—he is content to lean over the wooden bridge in Central Park with his best friend.</p>
<p>Only, his best friend doesn’t seem to be in a very good mood.</p>
<p>“Are you okay?” Bucky asks Steve.</p>
<p>Steve’s been quiet all day, his feet dragging across the pavement, a slowness to his movement that he’s never had before. Bucky wonders if he’s sick. Steve had told him once that when he was younger, he was often sick.</p>
<p>“I’m fine, Buck,” Steve says glumly. He’s also looking out over the bridge, the water sparkling a lovely blue.</p>
<p>“You don’t seem fine,” Bucky says. “You seem blue.”</p>
<p>Steve shrugs.</p>
<p>“Maybe I am,” he says.</p>
<p>“Wanna talk about it?” Bucky asks. He’s next to Steve on the bridge, his shoulders pressed close against him. Whatever Bucky’s feelings might be, he and Steve have never shied away from being tactile.</p>
<p>“No,” Steve says. Then he sighs and rubs his nose. “Yeah.”</p>
<p>Bucky waits for him. A little duckling swims up under the bridge and Bucky digs into his pocket for old bread. He’s not supposed to feed the ducks, but let Central Park security try and stop him.</p>
<p>“I was supposed to do something,” Steve says. “I had an...assignment.”</p>
<p>“An assignment?” Bucky says. He tears up the bread and scatters it into the water. “What, from school? Already?”</p>
<p>“No,” Steve says. “Not from school…”</p>
<p>Bucky looks at him questioningly.</p>
<p>“From my parents,” Steve says. “I had an assignment from my parents. I only had six months to do it. I thought...maybe I could finish. I was making progress, but it wasn’t enough.”</p>
<p>Bucky frowns.</p>
<p>“So what happened?”</p>
<p>Steve exhales in frustration.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” he says. And then, so quiet, Bucky thinks he’s imagined it, “You didn’t find the last piece.”</p>
<p>“What?” Bucky asks, nudging Steve. “Not quite sure I caught that.”</p>
<p>When Steve looks up at him again, Bucky’s surprised to see his face glowing pink. He looks...frustrated. No, he looks embarrassed.</p>
<p>Does he look upset?</p>
<p>“Steve?” Bucky asks.</p>
<p>“It’s nothing,” Steve says, swallowing thickly. He changes up his expression, wipes away the complicated look entirely and settles for resignation. “Bucky, I have to go back home soon.”</p>
<p>“What?” Bucky says, straightening. “When? Where?”</p>
<p>Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t think he knows where home <em>is</em> for Steve. He had assumed Brooklyn.</p>
<p>Steve shakes his head.</p>
<p>“It doesn’t matter,” he says, miserably. “I failed. I had six months and I was so close, but I failed.”</p>
<p>Bucky doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like the expression on Steve’s face and he doesn’t like the tone of Steve’s voice and he especially doesn’t like this—an impending deadline, a timeline he hadn’t known about. Where will Steve go? When? For how long?</p>
<p>He sticks his hands into his pockets, fingers all of the trinkets he’s collected over the past few months. They gather in the palm of his hand, each of them vibrating, each little piece humming against his skin.</p>
<p>Bucky gasps.</p>
<p>They warm in his palm, sparking against him, flaring, little bits of...magic.</p>
<p>Bucky looks from Steve to his pocket and then up to Steve. He frowns as Steve shimmers in front of him. He opens his mouth to say something when—</p>
<p>“Bucky?” Steve says.</p>
<p>Bucky’s not looking at Steve. He’s looking over his shoulder, across the little wooden bridge, down by the shore. There’s a little duckling pecking at it, but Bucky knows—he breathes in quickly, feeling it again, that tug in his stomach, the feeling against his skin.</p>
<p>“Bucky, what—” Steve tries, but Bucky pushes past him, hurrying across the bridge, and down the slight slope toward the water.</p>
<p>He’s down on his knees, ignoring the soft mud splattering his jeans, his fingers grasping around something. It glints in the New York City sunlight. It glimmers in his mud-coated palm, twinkling as bright as starlight. A ring of gold, vibrating against his skin.</p>
<p>“Oh,” Steve breathes out behind him.</p>
<p>Bucky, his heart thundering in his chest, looks up then.</p>
<p>Steve has changed.</p>
<p>His eyes, usually a bright blue, has shifted into a soft lilac. His fair hair shimmers golden in the sun. His cheeks are stained pink and his ears are a little sharp at the corners and his mouth, the color of blooming begonias, is gently curved up at the corners.</p>
<p>He’s floating, just above the ground. When he turns, slightly, Bucky can see wings at his back, iridescent, delicate wings the color of the sky before it darkens into twilight.</p>
<p>“You found it,” Steve says softly.</p>
<p>Bucky stares at him. His head is spinning, his heart beating rapidly against his ear.</p>
<p>He opens his mouth and says, “It was you. You were the magic.”</p>

<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div><p>Steve smiles at Bucky shyly and as he turns, as Bucky gets to his feet, the ring still in his hand, a bright haze envelops Steve. Bucky covers his eyes with his arm and when he uncovers it, there’s a crown of silver and gossamer sitting on Steve’s golden head.</p>
<p>“Steve,” Bucky breathes out.</p>
<p>“Hi Buck,” Steve says with a shy smile. “There’s something I should tell you.”</p>
<p>This is what Steve tells him: that Steve is the young prince of Faerie, the only son to Sarah Rogers, the Faerie Queen, descendent of Queen Mab herself, and Joseph Rogers, a half-Faerie, half-human of noble lineage. As is Faerie custom, upon his 21st birthday, Steve is to marry and begin preparing to take the crown.</p>
<p>“Marry?” Bucky says, distraught. “You’re getting married?”</p>
<p>“Well,” Steve says and that blush appears again, a pretty pink stain across his cheeks. “Maybe.”</p>
<p>“Maybe?”</p>
<p>“That depends,” Steve says. His coloring deepens, but when he looks at Bucky, it’s with bright eyes and a chin he lifts with stubborn grace. “On if you say yes.”</p>
<p>What Steve tells Bucky is this: that Steve had never wanted to marry, not any faerie princeling or princessling the Queen or King could find him. He had rejected prospect after prospect, good proposals and even better suitors. He had said no so many times he had developed a reputation: the stubborn, petulant Prince of Faerie, Queen Mab’s spoiled great-grandson, who cared only about himself and only about getting what he wanted.</p>
<p>That was not fair and he had told his parents such. He wasn’t against marriage; he just wanted it to be for love.</p>
<p>So they had struck a compromise: Steve was given six months to find someone of his own liking to marry or he would marry whosoever the Queen and the King chose for him.</p>
<p>Bucky looks at him now, his mouth hanging askew, utterly gobsmacked.</p>
<p>“The Queen and King,” he says slowly and swallows. He can’t believe this. He can see the crown glittering on Steve’s fair head, but <em>he can’t believe this.</em> “A prince. Steve, you’re a prince!”</p>
<p>“A faerie prince,” Steve says, with another shy smile.</p>
<p>“You didn’t tell me,” Bucky breathes out. “You should have said something, you should have—” and then he stops, processing something. “Wait.”</p>
<p>Steve looks more hesitant than Bucky has ever seen him.</p>
<p>“What do you mean if I say yes?”</p>
<p>Steve pauses and then floats closer to Bucky.</p>
<p>“I left tokens of Faerie,” he whispers. “Magicked trinkets and enchanted baubles. Pure nonsense. Most mortals don’t notice such things—the fae are everywhere, Bucky. Magic is everywhere.”</p>
<p>Bucky swallows, his heart beating hummingbird-fast near his throat.</p>
<p>“I could not marry someone who didn’t believe in magic,” Steve says with a smile. “So I left them all over, hoping they would find their way to people who were willing.”</p>
<p>“Willing?”</p>
<p>“To give magic a chance,” Steve says. “If you found one, you could find another. I waited—hoped that someone would follow the trail and find the last one.”</p>
<p>The ring glints in Bucky’s palm, winking up at him with the magic of Faerie.</p>
<p>Steve had left a trail of magic all over the city—small clues and pieces of a greater puzzle, like a faerie scavenger hunt. He had left them for anyone to find—for multiple people to find—and follow the trail back to his heart. But that wasn’t what happened, was it?</p>
<p>“I found them all,” Bucky says slowly. His eyes slowly widen. The breeze ruffles through his messy brown curls. “Steve.” He looks up at Steve—his friend, his <em>best</em> friend. “<em>I</em> found all of your tokens.”</p>
<p>Steve’s smile is proud, and tremulous.</p>
<p>He had been there, Bucky realizes, that day. Bucky had been crossing through Prospect Park when he had found the bright blue faerie button, shining on the empty park bench. He had slowed to a stop and turned, feeling the tug and the enchantment. He had found himself moving toward the bench, as though entranced. He had reached forward, closed his fingers around the button and, turning after, run almost nose-first into Steve.</p>
<p>That was the first time they had met.</p>
<p>And Steve had been with him each time else too, every time he found another faerie token, every time he felt that tug—that inexplicable and undeniable pull of magic.</p>
<p>Bucky doesn’t know if he wouldn’t have found the tokens without Steve. He does know he wouldn’t have found Steve without them.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter, either way.</p>
<p>The fact is that Steve had left a trail of magical tokens to find his true love and Bucky had found all of them.</p>
<p>“Do you think it’s enough?” Steve asks nervously and his golden eyebrows furrow, just a little, just gently.</p>
<p>“What is?” Bucky asks.</p>
<p>“Six months,” Steve whispers. “Do you think six months is enough to fall in love?”</p>
<p>Bucky doesn’t have magical trinkets of his own. He doesn’t have enchanted tokens or faerie baubles. What he has is what this world—the mortal world—gives him.</p>
<p>He stoops down quickly and picks from a thatch of light blue forget-me-nots. He twists the stem around and around his finger and ties it off at the end.</p>
<p>Steve watches him, entranced. The Prince of Faerie steps down from where he’s hovering, his feet touching lightly back on solid ground.</p>
<p>When Bucky turns back to him, he no longer has a crown, no pointed ears or faerie clothing or magic glow. He’s just Steve—golden and freckled and Bucky’s.</p>
<p>A golden magic ring is great, but a ring of flowers to a faerie prince is even better.</p>
<p>Bucky takes Steve’s hand and looks into his cornflower blue, faerie eyes.</p>
<p>“Six months is enough time for anything to happen,” Bucky says, with a smile. “Why not this kind of magic too?”</p>
<p>He slides the twisted flower ring onto Steve’s finger.</p>
<p>“I love you,” Bucky says. “And my answer is yes.”</p>
<p>Steve’s eyes grow wide, the blue shockingly bright even in the midday sun.</p>
<p>“I can’t get married yet,” Bucky says. He gives Steve an apologetic look. “If I don’t finish my degree, my Ma will kill me. Also I didn’t learn the laws of thermodynamics for it to go to waste.”</p>
<p>Steve groans loudly and it’s so familiar to Bucky, so terribly comfortable and familiar, that he grins—his face as bright as the sun.</p>
<p>Steve shakes his head in exasperation and when he looks at Bucky again, it’s with some consternation, but mostly overwhelming fondness.</p>
<p>“It’s a promise,” he says and then cupping Bucky’s face between both of his hands, the braided flower ring about his finger, the Prince of Faerie kisses Bucky.</p>

<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>*</p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>That was borderline saccharine, I apologize.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Unfortunately I got sniped on Twitter for bullying mythical Greek Hero and video game character Theseus, so I had to start over new! If you ever did follow me or would like to begin to follow me there, I can be found at the exceptionally cleverly "rebranded" <a href="https://twitter.com/spacerenegaydes">@spacerenegaydes</a>.</p><p>+ Fic collection can be RTed on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/spacerenegaydes/status/1347800442600882179?s=20">here</a> or reblogged on Tumblr <a href="https://spacerenegades.tumblr.com/post/640137825209270272/runaways-a-stevebucky-one-shot-collection-i-for">here</a> if you're so inclined!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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